Documents must contain a title element to aid in navigation
Accessibility testing for dev teams - No experience required
Compliance Data & Impact
Disabilities Affected
- Blind
- Deafblind
- Mobility
Standard(s)
- WCAG 2.1 (A)
- WCAG 2.0 (A)
WCAG Success Criteria [WCAG 2.1 (A)]
- 2.4.2: MUST: Page Titled
WCAG Success Criteria [WCAG 2.0 (A)]
- 2.4.2: MUST: Page Titled
How to Fix the Problem
Add an informative title to the document using the title element
with meaningful text.
Ensure that the document's title contains short, descriptive text
summarizing the page's contents.
Add a title to the document using the title tag. You can do this
as follows:
<html>
<title> A brief, clear, informative, and unique title</title>
<!-- the rest of the page content -->
</html>
A good title is brief, clear, informative, and unique. Ensure that the
document's title contains short, descriptive text summarizing the
page's contents. To pass this rule, it’s not sufficient to simply have a
title element; the element must also contain meaningful text.
Be sure to follow these best practices when writing a title:
- Replace placeholder titles such as “untitled page” with a more appropriate phrase
- Make each title unique - don’t duplicate titles across pages, even if they are similar.
- Put all unique information first. If you want to include the company’s name or brand in the title, this information should go after the unique content. Otherwise, users of screen readers will have to listen to this information over and over as they search for the page that interests them.
-
Make the page title match the top heading (ideally labelled as h1) on your
page. These don’t need to be identical, but it often makes sense to make
them very similar, since the
titleandh1elements serve essentially the same purpose.
In addition to making the page more accessible, titles have other benefits, since search engines use titles when filtering, ordering, and displaying results. Improving the accessibility of your site can also have the effect of making your page more findable.
Why it Matters
Screen reader users use page titles to get an overview of the contents of the
page. Navigating through pages can quickly become difficult and confusing for
screen reader users if the pages are not marked with a title. The page
title element is the first thing screen reader users hear when
first loading a web page.
The title is the first thing that screen reader users hear when
they arrive at a page. If there is no title or if the
title is not descriptive and unique, screen reader users must
read through the page to determine its contents and purpose.
Rule Description
The HTML document must have a title element to provide users with
an overview of its content, and when present, it must not be empty.
The Algorithm (in simple terms)
Ensures that each HTML document contains a title.
Resources
Refer to the complete list of axe 4.4 rules.
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